“That’s good too,” laughed Hans Castorp. “But I have learned a good deal about him through you.⁠—Yes, at that time I had not the faintest suspicion, I answered you that I was here for three weeks, I did not know any different. The Kleefeld girl had just been whistling at me with her pneumothorax, I hardly knew where I was. But I was feeling febrile even then⁠—for the air up here is not only good against the illness, you know, it is also good for it, it sometimes brings it to the surface⁠—which is of course a necessary step in the cure.”